Inderpal Grewal

On her book Saving the Security State: Exceptional Citizens in Twenty-First-Century America

Cover Interview of February 18, 2018

In a nutshell

Empires wax and wane, and what we are seeing today is the
slow and gradual waning of U.S. empire in the new century. I call this phase of U.S.
empire the “security state,” a phase in which the U.S. turns to war as the only
means of maintaining its status as the superpower. This book examines, through
research in American popular culture, media and law, how Americans, based on
race and gender, are dealing with this change as they try to both protest and shore
up the power of their country.

The American empire is waning because it refuses to support
those in need, citizens and non-citizens. The government is challenged by those
who see that it will not come to their aid in times of danger. In particular,
this failure is most striking when it comes to citizens of color, and it was clearly
visible, for example, in New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina when
the Bush Administration failed to help its citizens. It was not just people in
the U.S., but many around the world who saw that failure, adding to the global
change in attitudes towards the United States.

I argue that this waning of empire is a consequence of
decades of neoliberal policies enacted by U.S. administrations since that of
Ronald Reagan. Many scholars have found that neoliberal policies have led to
reduction in social safety nets, increases in military and the use of military
methods to repress insurgencies and protests internationally and domestically.
In addition, privatization of public goods and reduction of taxes have
increased inequalities. I argue that this neoliberalism is now at a different
stage: governments are now repressing restive and protesting groups by means of
authoritarian policies. This moment, which I call “advanced neoliberalism,” is
then about both protest and repression, as inequality leads to uprisings among
people.

At the same time, individuals in the U.S. believe that as
individual Americans they can uphold and maintain U.S. power and their global
stature. They do this in several ways that I describe in the chapters of the
book.

First, they become humanitarians, voluntourists, and
missionaries, hoping to show that Americans are still “good” and want to help
others even as the U.S. is waging destructive and dubious wars around the world. The
U.S. government supports some of these projects and uses humanitarianism to
further its military goals.

Second, individual Americans take on the task of
surveillance of their fellow citizens in order to maintain state security. Technology
plays a role here. Digital media technologies enable us to surveil our friends,
family and neighbors, and even parenting is now more focused on surveillance.
Women find empowerment through participation in surveillance and participate in
government anti-terrorism projects to protect the security state. Women in the
CIA, FBI and police are now staples of television and cinema as empowered
agents of the government.

Third, white men are given a special sort of power, that is,
the sovereign power to kill that is normally one that only the state can
exercise in liberal countries. By virtue of gender and race, white, mainly
Christian males are able to possess and use guns in ways that others cannot,
while Muslims and men of color are targeted by police if they possess guns. White
males are protected by police, politicians, laws and can use guns to kill
strangers, intimate partners and even themselves.

Despite all these efforts to protect the U.S. and its power, I
argue that citizens often end up becoming more insecure, and that U.S. power
continues to decline. War seems to be ongoing, gun violence is pervasive, and
women and people of color are often rendered more vulnerable by their
participation in the security projects of the state. Security is an ongoing and
endless project with no end in sight, yet it remains powerful because it is an
engine of capitalism and state power.

The dominant premise in evolution and economics is that a person is being loyal to natural law if he or she attends to self’s interest and welfare before being concerned with the needs and demands of family or community. The public does not realize that this statement is not an established scientific principle but an ethical preference. Nonetheless, this belief has created a moral confusion among North Americans and Europeans because the evolution of our species was accompanied by the disposition to worry about kin and the collectives to which one belongs.Jerome Kagan, Interview of September 17, 2009

[T]he Holocaust transformed our whole way of thinking about war and heroism. War is no longer a proving ground for heroism in the same way it used to be. Instead, war now is something that we must avoid at all costs—because genocides often take place under the cover of war. We are no longer all potential soldiers (though we are that too), but we are all potential victims of the traumas war creates. This, at least, is one important development in the way Western populations envision war, even if it does not always predominate in the thinking of our political leaders.Carolyn J. Dean, Interview of February 01, 2011